Lornia said, “I am saying that, eventually, it would’ve happened. If it had not been you that came for me, it would’ve been someone else. Eventually, somebody would’ve commanded me to deploy the weapon. Somebody would’ve fired the weapon. And if the person who commanded me had been the Federation, death and destruction would’ve followed behind. So what I am saying is that it was destined, yes, for me to become the weapon and for me to be commanded to loose the weapons powers.”
They stopped walking again. His fingers lifted and rested on her face and he brought her in close to him for another long and lingering kiss. Her lips warmed beneath his, and their tongues met and twisted. Desire snaked through him again, stirring every cell in his body His dick hardened, and his balls tightened. Heat coiled into his belly and then flushed up and down his thighs. God, he wanted her so badly.
The kiss broke off, and understanding hit. The Orb. That was what Tralam had been built to protect and keep. The Orb: that was a key; it was some kind of key that would unlock every universe and its parallel dimensions.
“The Orb will take us into other dimensions. That’s what you’re telling me, what you’ve been trying to tell me.”
“It already has. That’s how we came here, to this Tralam. The Orb brought us here. It brought us here because the weapon was a singular thing. It was one of a kind and built to never be able to be replicated in any other dimension. I don’t know how they did it. That tech they had was old before they died and yet it was so much more advanced than any we had ever seen. It’s still far more advanced than anything seen in any other universe, or dimension.”
He said, “If it is so precious, and precious it is indeed, why should we pass it along?”
And there it was again. That crisis of personality within him. Part of him wanted to scream that the Orb must be kept with them. He could feel the power of such a thing, and he knew that he would always feel that rush of power around something so huge and important. And that was why they must pass it along.
He looked into her eyes, and he saw a brief sadness there. She did know him well. She knew him well enough to know that he would not be able to withstand the corruption of the Orb. He had been able to withstand the corruption that the power of his being, the one who could control that ancient weapon, had brought into his soul, but only because he had loved her more than he had loved power.
But something that could control every single universe and every universe beyond those universes? Now that was true power.
She said, “I will tell you who we must pass it to, and I need you to understand why. The weapon is still within me, and one day I will be called upon again, but so will many others. The ones we will have to fight when war comes again are the last of the race that created both the weapon and the machine that created the doors that prevent any from entering into parallel dimensions. Our races do not know how to enter there, but they do. When they come, blackness will come with them. A blackness such as has never been seen before.”
Drake took a deep breath. “You are saying that the race that made the weapon and the machine that built Tralam had a civil war and some of that race was peaceful and good, and others were not. And that the good of the race is dead—and those who would possess the Orb for its power are all that are left and that they will eventually come to take the Orb back.”
“Yes.”
He stiffened. “Will I be at your side when that happens?”
Her answer was soft. “I can’t see the future Drake.”
No, she couldn’t. None could. “How do we keep them from coming here?”
Her eyes held his. “They can’t come here without the Orb, but they can enter other worlds that are not protected by its power. When the weapon launched in your world, it tore away the Orb’s protection. It must go to that world. There’s no other choice as to who to trust with it. We need someone capable of holding secrets tightly to his chest.
Blade. She meant Blade. That old resentment tried to come up. Blade was always the one given the power.
And why not?
Blade knew too well the cost of power, and he was imbued with the need to make things right, to set good into motion and to fight back against the evil and darkness that lurked in every shadow.
Drake did not even have to consider it. He already knew what universe would be the first to have to fight. The one he hailed from. Why that universe had to be so burdened was a question he could ask forever and never get an answer to. “I already know. I know, and I understand. Now let’s go look at those gardens of yours.”
She smiled at him, a radiant and real smile, and he could see that the rage and hurt and grief that had sharpened and honed the weapons lethal power had faded out of her now. There was only her now. Lornia. Gentle and soft, a believer in peace. A being who wanted only to live and to love and to make things grow.
She said, “I know you’re worried about being here alone with me. I knew that before you knew that you would be.”
His eyebrows angled toward his hairline. “Please tell me that you cannot read my mind.”
Her laughter was real and true. “No, I cannot. I just know how I felt alone here. Even if there were the two of us, we would eventually need other people. It’s simply a condition of having a soul. We must have others like us around us in order to feel whole.”
They came to a large center hall just then, and he heard the sounds of voices in the distance. His brows drew together, and he peered into the hallway. “Did I just hear that?”
Lornia nodded. She drew him onward, and he went willingly. The center hall was vast and there, right in the center, lay the machine that ran the fortress and held it fast. It was, like everything else, shiny and vibrant, well-oiled and running smoothly. It would withstand centuries and centuries and centuries of time, and he stared at it as they passed. He had never seen such a complicated, complex, and marvelous creation in his entire life. That a race so ancient had had the technology, so many millennia ago, to create such a thing was staggering.
That some remnants of that race survived, that the ones who had created the fortress had probably done so to keep the Orb and the weapon that they had wanted to use to protect it from the others of their race—those who would hold that power for themselves—frightened him all the way to the core.
Could those that they passed the Orb to truly keep it safe? Could they really fight back something so determined and advanced and do so without falling?
He had to hope that they could.
That too was a question he could ask forever and ever and never get the answer to.
